Energy management company EnerNOC, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENOC) announced that it will provide Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) with demand response capacity to facilitate grid stability as BPA integrates wind-powered generation into its transmission system.
This is the first project of its kind to draw upon demand response
capacity from commercial and industrial sites to balance both increases
and decreases in supply from renewable resources.
The project will be led by renewable energy consultancy Ecofys US, Inc.
EnerNOC said, if needed, its system will be capable of responding in fewer than 10 minutes to reduce grid demand when wind resources wane.
“It is a unique challenge to manage intermittent renewable resources, but we expect to show that some kinds of demand response have the flexibility required to match system needs,” said Ken Corum, a Senior Economist with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. “EnerNOC has proven that its demand response technology can be counted on to show up where and when it’s needed, and we hope that its participation in this program will lead the way for other utilities and grid operators looking to utilize demand response to help balance their increasingly diverse generation systems.”
EnerNOC’s demand response resources have been widely deployed with utility and grid operator partners to meet capacity, emergency, economic, and ancillary service needs. This project leverages EnerNOC’s proven, quick-response DR capabilities to balance load both when wind output decreases, in which case demand response is used for load curtailment, and when it increases suddenly, during which time sites in EnerNOC’s network will increase demand.
By providing a demand-side solution for maintaining load stability, EnerNOC’s implementation of demand response technology is designed to help reduce BPA’s investments in supply-side and storage infrastructure to prevent grid destabilization due to the integration of variable generation sources like wind.
Earlier this week, EnerNOC announced its tenth acquisition–M2M Communications, a company specializing in demand response in the agricultural industry.
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